Information Systems Evaluation: A Study in Hospital Organizations

Given increasing demand for timely and accurate information to support decision making, hospitals, a particularly complex type of service organization, have increasingly resorted to a wide range of tools such as the Clinical Information Systems (CIS). However, research has shown that such systems do not always meet hospital managers’ needs, and assessment processes are necessary both before and after CIS implementation. Aiming to identify whether the CIS do meet hospital managers’ information needs and do fit in the specificities of such organizations, this paper reports on the assessment of four CIS based on the perspective of their users in four hospitals in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews and non-obtrusive observation. On the one hand, the result shows that the four organizations have difficulties in using their systems, such as accessibility problems, inadequate training and system underutilization. On the other hand, they also benefit from such systems, as they make processes faster and enable information control. One can say that the results from this research contribute to a better understanding of evaluating information systems in hospitals. Managers of such organizations can benefit from these results when seeking to evaluate and improve their information systens.